Sunday, October 4, 2015

With
a federal election coming up in the month, Canada‘s going to be doing a lot of
inward-looking in the next few weeks, as people try to decide where the country’s
headed.

But
what about the rest of the world?

How
does the rest of 2015 look, according to the experts?

Well,
not that great, when you factor China into the picture. Which is a shame,
because I’m just getting used to being able to order things directly from
AliBaba.com …

All
kidding aside, it’s a weird, connected world that we live in: I was just talking
about this with my lady and as she's in the field of statistical research, she knows
a thing or two about what's going on out there, probably more than I do.

Without
getting into details, we both agreed - for different reasons - that the world's
become perhaps a little too interconnected for its own good. Countries are far
more codependent on far too many trade aspects to be insulated from one
another's problems when they crop up – just look at Greece this summer, and
China to a lesser degree. Economic cycles that used to take decades now take
only a few years to rise and fall. Which
makes predicting them extraordinarily difficult, even for experts in the field.

When
you live in the global village, everybody's problems are only a few doors away.

September 29 – Myo

I'm
thinking of getting an armband.

Not
just any armband though: a Myo, which is a device that reads our movements and
translates them into electrical impulses I can be read by a computer.

More
accurately, it translates the electrical impulses that it reads from your
muscles into unique signals that can be mapped onto functions via computer
software. So you can simply make a series of gestures to open a presentation on
the laptop, moved to the next slide, rotate diagrams and so forth - all of
those are just the most basic application of Myo:

Where
it really gets interesting is when you combine a pair of Myo armbands with
properly configured software and accompanying drivers. This allows users to
play their various games without a controller, albeit at this stage still with
slightly less-than-perfect accuracy due to the fact that Myo was only been released
to the world less than year ago.

It’s
interesting to note that I found reviewers split in their opinions of how well
the device works. Bitshift Interactive makes software called ‘Mapper For Myo’
that apparently makes all the difference in using the device, which I found out
by reading some of the reviews on the device’s Amazon.com sales page - weird,
but useful nonetheless.

I'm
still keeping an eye on this device, hoping that it will be more mature in the
next year, with support from major software houses for various games and
devices. I'd love to be able to forgo having to use a mouse or game controller
altogether, so that I can play for more than 15 or 30 min. of the time before
my arms decide they've had enough.

September 30 – Prime!

I
took the day off today. Not
by choice: I was too sick to work.

Monday
night I started getting the sniffles and by noon yesterday, the goal that
everybody else had made itself known in my own sinus cavities – yay. I sucked
it up( literally ) until I got home and from there things just went downhill, until
this morning when I started killing Kleenexes at a rate of one every 5 min. or
so: there was no way I be able to work in that condition, so I called work to
sell the bad news, then went back to bed for a bit.

On
the bright side, despite the extremely runny nose that made me wear off at
least two layers of skin by days end, I got to catch up a little bit on a few
things, including a TV series that I've meant to watch more of this year but
haven't found the time: Transformers Prime.

Originally
airing in late 2010, the series has one various daytime awards, including
several Emmy’s and has impressed me with the quality of both its animation and
writing. Among all the other excellent voice actors, it's also a nice touch
that the show has Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime, reprising
his role.

Through
the convenience of Netflix, I made my way through to almost the end of the
second season by the end of the day, interspersed with a few power naps and
other projects. While I wasn't feeling better by the end of the day, I was
feeling the worst.

It's
been a while since I spent the day just watching TV like this and - I liked it.
Looking at my substantial collection of series on DVD, I am again reminded how
precious time is to me these days and how wisely I have to budget it… so
getting to spend a day catching up was extremely satisfying.

October 1 – Doc Says I’m Weird.

It
was a half-for me today, in several ways,.

I
went to work for a half day this morning, which was probably a bad idea – my nose
was still unhappy with me( I'll spare you the details )and I had little energy
by lunchtime.

Fortunately
by then, I left for a doctors appointment, to see a physiatrist.

I've
been waiting to see a specialist of his type for a few years now, to see what
can be done for my wrists. Ironically, it’s taken a year for my doctor to
finally see that my right leg’s swollen tendon isn’t going to go away with
massage therapy and so necessitated the appointment with a physiatrist today.

The
results, after an hour’s exam? I’m ‘weird’ …

Or,
in medical terminology, everything was moving correctly but as I still have specific
recurring pains, the doctor’s going to send me to see a rheumatologist. It was
unfortunate that the medical ultrasounds of my arms taken a month after my 2012
injury could be located, but somehow that seems par for the course of trying to
get myself back to rights.

I'm
tempted to facepalm a bit here, but at least it’s progress. I'm thankful that
the doctor listen to me and performed numerous tests to see movements of my
tendons and ligaments all over. He did mention that my hamstrings were
extremely tight, another reason to suggest continuing massage therapy on a
regular basis.

Guess
it’s time for more patience.

October 2 – Guns

I
was going to talk about the subject of guns here, but I got tired.

That,
I think, is one of the problems in the States right now.

Too
many guns, and everyone's tired of talking about how to fix a problem that
nobody really wants to talk about in a country where people would rather shoot
someone to talk to them about a problem.

How
mixed up is that?

You
can cite statistics until the cows come home to support the view of either side
– this is a standard tactic of any political entity - but rarely does action
take place quickly. The notable exception of this is Australia, who after a
terrible mass shooting in 1996 instituted sweeping changes in gun control that
saw the vast majority of weapons in that country removed from the hands of the
average citizen - you can read about the results of that here.

I've
mentioned before about how crazy it is, in my mind, to believe that in order to
stay safe from harm you have to be armed not only at home but while going about
your day, and in the minds of many Americans, armed at work too – just in case.

A
too-plentiful supply of death means everyone gets a share, whether they want it or
not.

October 3 – Farm time!

What
a grand day!

As
well as dawning sunny and mild, I was able to spend the day with my lady.

After
breakfasting at the sublime Adrienne’s, we made our way back to town… but were
sidetracked by a corn maze on the way.

That’s
right: a corn maze.

But
first we rode a train around the property, passing by their Old West town which
was still the process of being readied for their Halloween nighttime shows starting
in a week or so. It was pretty cool checking around the 40 acres or so of farm
on the track, seeing the crops while the train driver told us all about the
functioning of the farm and pointed out the fun attractions as we went along.

Things
were less scary in the daytime, I must say, but more fun for sure.

The
corn maze is an annual staple of the farm, lazy winding paths that sometimes
loop and sometimes simply dead-end. The corn is thick enough that can't see
where you're going, but there's little fear of being hopelessly lost as the
entire maze is only a few hundred feet on aside in total. It was pleasant to simply
meander in the bright sunshine with my lady.

Before
leaving the maze, we took a detour to wander through the Old West town that had
been set up as part of the Halloween events to come later this month. Only
about half the electrical setups were working, but the small-scale town was fun
to look at, giving you a hint of what it was like to be back in the frontier
days again.

A
fun time was most definitely had by all today!

October 4 – Media and a Movie

Ripping
the heck out of my media collection is going well.

So
well, in fact, that I'm running out of room: even with 6 terabytes of space on
my Acer Aspire H340 server, it’s getting crowded. I'll have to repurpose a few
more drives from older computers in order to move things around, but I'm
determined to digitize as much of my TV series collection as possible in the
next week and then move on to the movies until the trial period for the software
I'm using runs out. I’m only using the single function to rip the DVD’s, but
it's been useful enough that when I do get around to adding more storage, I may
just purchase the whole program, though I don't know if I really want to use
their software to categorize my collection, as are ready have things like Plex
that make it even simpler to access my media.

In
the evening, my girlfriend and I watched Disney’s Atlantis, a film I haven't seen for probably close on 10 years or
more. My lady likes the film and we both enjoyed watching it, even with the
logical errors introduced when you have things like people who have lived
10,000 years but somehow forgotten how to write or read…. Guess that slipped by
the script editors. Which is surprise, as Joss Whedon wrote the first draft of
this movie, but later edits obviously change things around substantially – the Wikipedia entry for the film is a gold mine of information about how this happened and it
saddens me in a way that I’ll never get to see the potential masterpiece that this film could have been in the first place.

Sorry about the odd colours for
the last few blog entries: I’ve been writing the blog earlier in the evening
and adjusted the colours in Word to white text / darker background – oops. And with my sister away for a few weeks, I have the place to myself to Get Things Done - w00t!